Doom3 Graphics?

[zAAm]

Can anyone tell me why Doom3 runs so slow on most PC's? What does it have graphically that's so intense? I mean, even if you turn off bump-mapping and specularity, it's still ridiculously slow. And the textures are much worse than most games as well close-up. And what does it store in video RAM that requires a 512MB card??? It couldn't be textures, because they are awful even at ultra quality. Compressed or not. And then it doesn't have a lot of polygons either... I don't get it. Anyone care to enlighten me?

 

[djbbenn]

I know Doom 3 is very CPU intensive, so you need a fast one. I yet to get the game, so I don't know much about it, besides its power hungry.

-Dan

 

[TeufelHund]

Doom3 is not that intensive I ran it on my old 2.4ghz with 750mb ram and radeon 9600 128mb 64 bit with the graphic settings on high I think and I still got a very nice frame rate

 

[djbbenn]

Ya you don't need a 512mb video card for it, I think its like 64. But to get better fps, a faster cpu will help more in Doom than it will i most other games.

-Dan

 

[zAAm]

I know it doesn't need that much video RAM, but they recommend 512MB if you use ultra quality. Then high for 256MB, medium for 128MB and low for 64MB. I do get about 30fps average on high quality, but I don't know why it's so slowww! I can't see what's taking up so much power!!

 

[grazzhoppa]

Doom3 is so intensive because it calculates lighting and shadowing in real time. It also calculates vis in real time too. The only thing that would kill performance is having lights that overlap each other and that hit the same surface. That's why Doom 3 is sometimes extremely dark, Id couldn't use tons of lights because then things like the xbox couldn't run it. Because of the dynamic lighting, textures appear black if there are no lights. Engines that use light mapping (static lighting) - like quake 3, half life, half life 2 - have textures appear full-bright when there are no lights in the map. It is a balancing act right now to create a well lit map that will run on low end computers.

The textures appear like crap close up when you use the quality settings medium and low. You shouldn't be seeing crappy textures if you run it on high or ultra. Unless of course, you have your nose right against a wall.

Why does Doom 3 need 512 mb of video ram? Because for every texture you see, Doom 3 needs 3 images to create it. So the amount of memory Doom 3 needs practically triples from previous engines. There's 3 images that Doom 3 needs to create what you see in game - diffuse map (for color), specular map (for lighting highlights), normal map (used for bump mapping). This is how games will opperate in the future.

You can see how many lights are hitting a single surface by typeing r_showlightcount 1 into the console.
black- 0 lights
red - 1
green - 2
dark blue - 3
cyan - 4
pruple - 5
white - 6+

Mappers try not to have more than 3 lights hitting the same surface.

 

[zAAm]

Mmmm. That makes more sense... And I ran on ultra settings and the textures are only about a quarter of the detail of say UT2004's textures. But I can understand that if you have to balance the ratio between quality textures and normal mapping and all that there has to be a trade-off somewhere. But what's weird is that even though you put off all effects it still runs more or less the same. Except bump-mapping, which can cause a rather major performance boost (but looks like crap), but even that cannot make it run very fast. On my 9600XT I don't expect super framerates, but I should've thought that with no effects on it would at least pass the 50fps mark over the 30fps with all effects on?? Maybe ID just optimized the engine for bump-mapping exclusively? Because I guess it sucks at just normal rendering...

 

[wazzledoozle]

Its your 9600XT thats holding you back. Try for medium detail at 1024x768

 

[zAAm]

That's the whole point. I have a 256MB card so texture memory isn't the problem. But I ran a timedemo on high and on medium. It showed an awe-inspiringly amazing 1fps difference! 30.4fps on high and 31.4fps on medium... But I was just wondering more in general why it runs so slow.

 

[Anarion]

" Can anyone tell me why Doom3 runs so slow on most PC's? "

becoz they wanna more money !every hw/sw, companies.

afaik , doom3 can run with this quailty (without fancy sfx ,which we can't even see 'em) @ high fps . but why not , better ask 'em.

 

[wazzledoozle]

That's the whole point. I have a 256MB card so texture memory isn't the problem. But I ran a timedemo on high and on medium. It showed an awe-inspiringly amazing 1fps difference! 30.4fps on high and 31.4fps on medium... But I was just wondering more in general why it runs so slow.

The 9600XT core, not the memory is what is making it slow. Only 4 pipelines and 128 bit memory, its gonna chug at high settings. Dont be fooled by the 256 mb marketing scheme.
At High detail, 8 Anistropic texture filtering is enabled, which would kill any 9600XT. Im not sure which AA setting is enabled at high, but its too much for a 9600XT.

 

[zAAm]

I know that wazzle thanks... And I'd never be fooled by a 256MB marketing scheme! I'd rather buy a 128MB card that gives better performance, but I was just saying that medium detail doesn't actually give me any performance boost. And the 8xAF doesn't kill the 9600XT but any AA does! Luckily Doom3 doesn't enable that by default on any setting. But I've finally narrowed it down to just dynamic lighting. That's the most important factor. Turn it off and you easily get 290fps. (AND o'course you can see almost nothing ) Also, what performance do you guys get with Doom3? I can just check tom's hardware but would like to know if any of you get better/worse performance?

 

[warluck]

Can anyone tell me why Doom3 runs so slow on most PC's? What does it have graphically that's so intense? I mean, even if you turn off bump-mapping and specularity, it's still ridiculously slow. And the textures are much worse than most games as well close-up. And what does it store in video RAM that requires a 512MB card??? It couldn't be textures, because they are awful even at ultra quality. Compressed or not. And then it doesn't have a lot of polygons either... I don't get it. Anyone care to enlighten me?

Looking at your config and results of your benchmark ,sound really strange for me ,i played Doom3 ,Far cry and both run very well no setup ,nothing ,(never try some tweaking ,no needs ) Connect3D 9600XT 128 .Asus A7N8Xe-Deluxe ,dual channel with differents brand memory ,Maxtor 80 g ata 133 and no trouble ,.Your drivers are updated ? Did you pathed it ? Take a look here maybe ,good luck
http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=248

 

[PanVulcon]

i believe that doom3 doesnt catch the textures like in most games and so will course lots of stutering from scene to scene.

if you stay in the same scene for a while doese the stuttering stop?

any help?

 

[Deleted member 3]

Doom 3 runs fine on Voodoo 2 SLI as someone posted on these forums some time ago.

Graphics are... different though

 

[grazzhoppa]

Theorectically you could create an entire game out of one level with the doom3 engine. You would just need enough video card and system ram to store all the textures and scripts. The way doom3 renders is that maps get chop up into parts by level designers. If the player doesn't not have a direct line of sight with a part, the engine does not render it. Doom3 handles this extremely well, better than other engines, like Source, because it calculates the visibility line of sight in real time.

Like in the actual game, rooms seperated by doors were seperate parts. So when you open up a door, the engine begins rendering the next room. That could cause slight stuttering (but very much less than how Half Life 2 handles loading game assests - i.e. the stuttering bug). If you don't have enough system ram, things will need to be loaded from the harddrive while you're playing and that will kill performance. I'm not bashing half life 2's engine just to bash it - each engine has things it does better than the other.

 

[zAAm]

Doom 3 runs fine on Voodoo 2 SLI as someone posted on these forums some time ago.

LOL! So all I'd have to do is disable everything and it'll run better? No bump-mapping, real-time lighting or shadows and no normal mapping... Sounds good. Hehe. And the game doesn't stutter or anything much, and it runs almost entirely playable, but I had just wondered why it performed so badly. I can say one good thing about the source engine though - it runs at 80fps! Hehe.

 

[Dippyskoodlez]

That's the whole point. I have a 256MB card so texture memory isn't the problem. But I ran a timedemo on high and on medium. It showed an awe-inspiringly amazing 1fps difference! 30.4fps on high and 31.4fps on medium... But I was just wondering more in general why it runs so slow.

256mb ram is useless on a 9600 because the card is incapable of utilizing the extra performance from it- which is why you notice no difference.
Most games use a lazy engine, to play smooth on everything...

Doom 3's engine is made to look extremely nice, but its going to take a while before GPU's will be able to keep up...

 

[zAAm]

No, I would think the fact that I could run with higher detail without much of a performance difference quite exactly why the 256MB helped... Although it doesn't give any extra performance, it can reduce disk or RAM swapping of textures so it would help with games with huge textures. But I didn't specifically buy the 256MB in hopes of better performance over the 128MB though! I actually just got it for a cheaper price so why not? Hehe. And basically what you're saying is it's going to be a while before GPU's can make up for the sloppy engine?

 

[warluck]

I, m sure 256 help ,why with 256 mb some card , the frequency core /memory are higher at factory ? It,s hard to know when ex: your friend run a setup a little bit inferior or equal and run every games without any troubles. Sure when we see those benchmarks with bigs results it,s nice .Maybe no anti-virus ,spyware etc ,all those programs takes here and there ,.

 

[Dippyskoodlez]

And basically what you're saying is it's going to be a while before GPU's can make up for the sloppy engine?

Thats what im saying, but your saying it wrong- its not a sloppy engine. Its very good, just... not quite how GPU's have been moving twards... and they will be soon..... they cant pump pixel shaders forever.

 

[Christer]

I run Doom3 with all settings to max and its seamless. The only thing I get that annoys slightly is that when I walk up to a door there is like a 1-2 second delay sometimes before it opens....but I guess thats a CPU/RAM issue?

 

[wazzledoozle]

I run Doom3 with all settings to max and its seamless. The only thing I get that annoys slightly is that when I walk up to a door there is like a 1-2 second delay sometimes before it opens....but I guess thats a CPU/RAM issue?

Just Doom 3.

 

[zAAm]

I run Doom3 with all settings to max and its seamless. The only thing I get that annoys slightly is that when I walk up to a door there is like a 1-2 second delay sometimes before it opens....but I guess thats a CPU/RAM issue?

Very surprising considering you have a 7800GTX...
And yeah, it's just because Doom3 loads the next area that you have that small delay.